Archive for August, 2007

The directory of royalty free stock photographs at the Small Business Resource Center has been updated to add four additional websites. Our directory rates sites from 5 star down to 1 star, and we now feature links to 22 sites. More than 150 websites were reviewed to save visitors time finding stock photos with limited restrictions for commercial use.

While many stock photo directories use “free” to describe their photographs, caution must be used. There is a subtle yet important difference between copyright, publicity rights, and privacy rights. The US Library of Congress provides an excellent comparison of rights: copyright, publicity, and privacy here.

A photo of a person, famous or otherwise, requires a model release to avoid infringement or violation of fair use. Photographs of famous places or product logos may be in violation of the law, also, even if you took the photograph.

Some stock photo sites may not explain copyright versus publicity or privacy rights, so please read the license of any photograph you are considering from these websites and then for reference review the Library of Congress legal notice to avoid violations.

Visit the Small Business Resource Center free stock photo directory here.

If you are learning what I teach about the importance of backlinks for search engine optimization, or seo, don’t overlook my advice to avoid link schemes or link farms. Lately it seems link exchange requests are gaining popularity with spammers.

The last few months link exchange requests are showing up almost daily in my email inbox. My advice for my small business clients is ignoring people who address you as “Dear Webmaster” and delete their message. If they offer an option to “opt out” to cease receiving their solicitations, don’t do it. Some junk mailers will comply with your request to be removed from their mail list, and then give or sell your email address to someone else. The best choice is ignore the message because once you reply to make the opt-out request, you just confirmed they have a valid email address to pass on to cohorts.

Bonus tip: In Outlook, when you highlight an email message and press the delete button to get rid of it, that message is still held on your computer. Instead, highlight the offending message and then hold the shift key while you press the delete key once, and you get the warning “Are you sure you want to delete this message permanently?” which means that the junk is not only gone, it cannot be retrieved. Select “yes” to delete the email message forever.

In previous posts and in my series of free pdf seo reports for do-it-yourself website promotion, I’ve championed the value of backlinks to your site. Be careful. The most recent requests coming to me from junk mailers are three way link schemes. You link to us, and we have another third site that will link to you.

Their strategy is deceptive because they want to create the appearance of voluntary one-way links. Forget the fact that their inbound link will be from a totally unrelated site, and has zero value to you, they are conspiring to create false popularity of their websites. Any deceptive means for improving your standing with search engines will eventually be caught. You will be punished, so don’t do it.

My recent report for do-it-yourself small business website promotion introduced SubmitEaze for submitting your website to web directories. The strategy of listing your site in public directories that sort websites by category is one way to gain backlinks to your website.

Each link TO your site is like a vote when found by search engines, so small business website owners are encouraged to take 30 minutes a week to submit to 5 sites. For more natural linking over an extended period of time, pick one day a week to submit to 5 sites, and continue the weekly project for 6 months instead of spending 2-3 days of intensive submissions.

The free seo report Web Directory Top Resources listed my top 150 sites, and some may be outdated. The SubmitEaze software is preprogrammed with current sites and their future updates are free for life. This has been a great time saver because of the auto fill feature. As of August 2007 it is available in your choice of Pro License for $64.95 or Standard License at $39.95. View SubmitEaze features or download a trial copy here.

Here is the list of features and benefits displayed on the opening window of SubmitEaze version 4.0.

• Find directories that link to your website using Directory Detective.
• Full control over the auto-fill feature, so you can add your own fields.
• Sort directories on Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, or number of Incoming Backlinks to the directory.
• Setup rotating link title text and description text for each project.
• Full range of directories: Free, Reciprocal Link Required, and Payment Required.
• Project Briefcase so you can import / export projects between different computers.
• Full web browser navigation to display the current URL, move backwards, forwards, stop and refresh.

Pros: Ease of use, updated free for life, great time saver, excellent help files with video tutorials
Cons: A few outdated sites because directories changed from free to free with reciprocal link

This is software that I have purchased and use, and I recommend SubmitEaze for small business owners.

Hot topics for small business owners include solutions for taxes, insurance, and marketing. Most entrepreneurs are so busy with day to day details of running their business that priorities sometimes get overlooked. Time is the enemy, and finding a way to defeat the worst small business enemy is filled with distractions.

The strategy of locating new customers, attracting repeat customers, and contacting prospects is made more difficult for sole proprietors because delegating responsibility to the guy in the mirror will not save you any time. Tactical activities that generate revenue are a necessity. In order to grow, owners must identify non-essential tasks and avoid spending time on things that are fun to do, and utilize spare time for long term strategic goals like marketing.

The discipline to focus on planting seeds to harvest in the future while maintaining existing day to day momentum will make the difference between success and failure. Learn to question what you do, as you do it, and stop activities that are unnecessary which will allow you to stay focused on tasks to help your business grow.

My pet peeve time waster is research. How easy it becomes to go online looking for information, and realize an hour later you followed a path that was fun and interesting without having anything to do with the original goal. Learn to recognize ways that time becomes your worst small business enemy, and watch your productivity improve.

Each page of the Small Business Resource Center main site and blog now includes a Google Custom Search box to enhance the usability and navigation for visitors. Previous lessons for web developers advised designers to include ease of use and navigation in layouts, and with the growth of this site to nearly 200 pages the search function was overdue.

The search boxes are located in the top right column of each page on the main site, and below the introduction and photo in the left column of each blog page. The article written in July 2007 entitled Tap the Seo Power of Google points to free resources for webmasters that are available, and you may find out more at About Google.

If your small business website has expanded to 50 or more pages, you should consider adding the search function to your site, as well. Blogs are different and tend to grow rapidly, so you may need the search function sooner than later. By posting to a blog twice per week you add over 100 pages to your website in just one year, so visitors are more likely to stay longer if you provide a search option.

Feel free to contact me for advice or suggestions to implement the Google Custom Search function to your website or blog.

The next pdf download in my free series of search engine optimization reports is available. Unlike some free reports, visitors do not have to register or provide an email address to download any of these free SEO advice reports.

Visit my main site to download the “Web Directory Top Resources” PDF report and learn the process for submitting your site to website directories to gain backlinks. This is #4 in the series of 6 Do-It-Yourself Website Promotion reports for small business owners, so get the others if this is your first visit. Bonus information includes my list of Top 150 Web Directories.

My oldest email account goes back to the last century, and sometimes it’s tough giving up an old friend. The address gets so much spam that I don’t use it and so it gets checked infrequently. I recommend small business owners check their email more often. Imagine the surprise with the following load of email since the last time I did Spring Cleaning when it really was Spring.

You have 1,842 unread messages with 155 in the inbox and 1,687 in the bulk folder. Those took 5-10 minutes to delete, and in the end my previously saved email was down to 5. One is a resource that my readers may enjoy. In February I recommended people take a typing course. From the 5 emails I had saved, here’s a typing related message with a link to an online typing test that may be a resource worth a moment of your time.

TYPINGTEST.COM TEST RESULTS

Jim Degerstrom,

You have today completed TypingMaster’s On-line
Typing Test with the following results:

Test Time: 1 min.
Typing Speed: 70 WPM
Accuracy: 100 %

NET SPEED: 70 WPM

Looking back at my last year in high school, the choice to take typing proved valuable for my career 20 years later hand coding XHTML for websites. Today’s lesson is keep an eye on dormant email accounts, plus another reminder that it’s never too late to learn how to type. Writing web content, advice articles, press releases, and everyday correspondence is much more efficient even at 35-40 words per minute if you’ve never learned touch typing before.